


For a Following Sea

by lemonsharks



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, F/F, Happy Ending, Pining, References to Canon, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 17:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5636326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/pseuds/lemonsharks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A departure, a reunion, and the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For a Following Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [teratodentata.tumblr.com](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=teratodentata.tumblr.com).



"There are people who need helping everywhere, sweet thing," Isabela says, while the city burns behind her and the water slaps against the pilings beneath her feet, lights sparking out, sirens wailing. Not the sirens she was hoping for, those. Magic's got out into the world again, and the world, turns out, is  _ not _ ready for magic.

The ship, more than a dinghy and less than a yacht, is just a slipknot away from flight to someplace tropical, with illicit goods to smuggle and cold drinks with sweet lime and rum. 

"I can't  _ abandon _ \--" Merrill says, and stops, freezing for a moment while dogs bark at the end of the dock and and their handlers pull them along. Not Aveline's men, so probably the national guard; Aveline's men would have noticed and come sauntering up. Wanting to know if everything is was all right, when so much has clearly gone straight to hell. 

"--can't just  _ leave _ the other elves to go on  _ holiday _ . They have enough trouble with the authorities even when you don't add in all of--"

She gestures back toward the city, where the fire's spreading, miraculously,  _ away _ from the slums. 

"They'll come after you, too," Isabela says. "Hawke can't stop them; he'll be their whipping boy sure as the sun rises in the east, and if he has two brain cells left to rub together--"

"He and Fenris left this morning," Merrill replies, airily. It's a tone she hasn't taken often before, outside her own sorcery: full of self-assurance and a little cocky. Isabela thinks she ought to use it more often, and aches knowing that she may never hear the cadence of her lilting voice again.

Merrill has soot on her skin and tangles in her hair, where she's taken down the handful of small braids she normally wears. Her shirt's torn at the shoulder and she doesn't have a jacket, and if Isabela waits much longer people bigger and meaner than she is will close the marina to any traffic at all and then she'll be even more  _ fucked _ than she is now, and not in the fun way.

"Can't you just be selfish for once?" Isabela hisses.

"Maybe I'll try it. Not tonight, though. The next time you see me."

She shucks Varric's duster, the one he lent her when they both needed to change silhouettes earlier today, with its ridiculous sleeves and her .22 pistol concealed in an inner pocket. The little gun's the only thing her friend can shoot without falling over. She'd taught her how, with a different fire tearing across the hills to the south, and poppies growing thick and orange at their feet. Merrill had caught her palm in the slide and not noticed the trickle of blood soaking into the grip until the blasted thing started jamming every other shot. 

Isabela wraps the coat around Merrill's shoulders; it trails to her ankles, the hem resting in a puddle at her feet. Before she can say anything-- _ be selfish for once,  _ **_please_ ** \--she has her arms wrapped tight around her elf's ribcage and her lips pressed against the corner of her jaw. 

It is not a friendly kiss. At  _ all _ .

_ Merrill _ turns her head and slots her mouth against Isabela's, stands on tiptoe and bites her lower lip, sucks it between her own. Isabela is,  _ very slightly _ , taken aback, by the cool tapered fingers on her face and the sharp teeth around her tongue. 

She pulls away after they've spent too long at goodbye. 

"Should've done that years ago," Isabela says. Merrill grins.

It's the kind of grin that tells the secret,  _ she's not half the innocent she plays. _

"Come back when things have quieted down," Merrill says. She licks her lips.

She'll be all right.

"Stay safe, if you have to stick around this cesspit," Isabela replies, and then it's up the ladder and out to sea. 

 

She runs the diesel engine only when she has to and lives off dusty beef jerky, crackers slathered with butter-flavored shortening, and the couple of sad-looking, six-inch-long orange roughy that see fit to attach themselves to her lines. 

"Next time I have to steal a boat," she tells the rigging, mumbled around a rope between her teeth, "I'm picking one with a better-stocked kitchen."

She ties her hitch and steps back and away from her handiwork, resting a hand on the railing and tacking for the southwest. "Not that you  _ aren't _ perfectly lovely, of course."

_ Someone paid a lot of money for this boat. Someone will have been very upset to see her missing. _

Isabela finds the half-remembered tune of a song Merrill taught her one drunken, joyous night years and years ago settling down on her lips. She makes the islands in six days with a good wind at her back and clear skies overhead. 

She  makes berth on a slip of land that used to be all resort-vacation spot for the kind of people who can call themselves richer than God and not be lying. 

She's run a scam or two here before, and the plan for this stop-over involves picking a few locks, picking up a few pretty baubles and priceless works of art, some better food, and then meeting with some select friends of hers who don't ever ask about pesky things like  _ provenance _ . 

The island's gone quiet except for the birds, the rats, and one lone orange tabby that  _ regards _ her from the door frame of a boarded-up spa. Isabela's radio plays little more than skips and static for her, but on her second night in port she makes out human voices. Mages being rounded up, land crumbling into the ocean near areas of conflict, calls to  _ deport _ , to  _ neutralize _ , and  _ fucking Anders,  _ Hawke's last, best, and stupidest mercy, still at large. The broadcast cuts off. She can't pick it back up again. 

_ I shouldn't  _ be _ here _ , she thinks, and,  _ Where has everyone  _ gone?

Word of just one person is not the kind of thing that filters out this far, and she can't  _ not know _ .

Isabela fills her hold with the things she came for along with caviar and boxes of truffles, nearly-ripe pineapple she plucks from and untended decorative hedge, and more fresh water than she knows she'll need for the trip home. She tops off both fuel tanks and  _ hopes _ that the engine keeps going even with magic on the wind . The cat watches her from thirty yards away, wide eyes unblinking, and it's not until she's got her sea legs back again that the prickle on her neck fades to a cold foreboding. It's the only living thing she sees the entire time she's there.

Sailors are a superstitious lot, and Isabela found her people among the ones who make the sea their home--she knows a sign when it's painted black and red and nailed to the mast in front of her. Takes twelve days and a jury-rigged set of repairs to the engine that  that really shouldn't work at all before she catches sight of the mainland, and the coast before her is no coast she's ever seen before.

 

With the world turned arse over teakettle, gold and secrets aren't half the plunder they used to be. She finds _that_ out when she tries to unload her take. Paper money's gone more _tinder_ than tender, now, and it sinks in late that the real riches are in shelf-stable food and clean water. The army's come in beside the national guard, and the doors to mages' houses all have sharp spray-painted slashes on the doors.

Isabela is down to her last pineapple and a sack of worthless gold rings and bangles when she spots Merrill next: she's fled inland. 

She goes up to the mountains because once Merrill dragged her and Hawke and Fenris there for a day surrounded by fresh air and nature. Only Hawke broke out in hives, and that, she guessed, was as much because he didn't think he was allergic to poison sumac as anything else. 

The elf is in a hooded sweatshirt that threatens to swallow her whole, and Isabela's gut twists in time with her throbbing feet. 

"You, there!" she calls, "It's not safe out here with no one to watch your back, yeah?"

Merrill turns sharply around. The outline of Isabela's .22 hangs low in the sweatshirt's belly-pocket, and the mage's staff in Merrill's hand glows faintly dying-moss green for a moment before she tenses and breathes. 

"I thought you'd gone off and  _ died _ ," she says. "Ships get out of sight of the shore and it's like they've dropped off the edge of the  _ world, _ now!"

There's pine in the air, the scent of it heavy and clinging, and it suits her more than the dark circles gathered under Merrill's eyes these past weeks. The quips she might have made once die on Isabela's tongue, and the pineapple is heavy in her arm. 

She replies, "I got you a present, kitten." And, "You've brought all the elven slums in the city up here, have you?"

Isabela puts the fruit between them, because she isn't supposed to  _ care _ for people, just her ship and her crew; men and women who steal with her and and take their cut of the prizes and who take care of each other because it's the best way to not get killed or thrown into the kind of jail that's unkind to its prisoners. 

But Merrill, Merrill with twice-forbidden magic and her solid knowledge that whatever she tried would turn out all right, her slender frame and clean-burning passion for beautiful things and need to do _better_ \--Merrill sneaked up on her. Isabela resents that she doesn't resent it, that she come back because she can't stay away. Terrible puns have always been Hawke's forte, not hers, but she thinks this is what she might call a  _ sea change _ . 

She smiles, over the pineapple's spiky crown. The most ridiculous hostess gift of all time, but it's  _ right _ .

Then Merrill wraps her up in thin arms, breathes out, "So much has  _ happened _ . It'll take  _ hours _ to tell the whole thing!"

And for  _ this _ kiss, there's no rush at all. 


End file.
